Written and Directed by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland | 95 min | ▲▲
As I understand it, Ray Mendoza is an American veteran of the Iraq War. On Alex Garland’s Civil War, Mendoza was a consultant for the militaristic action sequences. He shared with Garland the story of how in 2006 he and his team of SEALs were pinned down in a house in an Iraqi town and an explosion badly wounded his pal Elliott, who subsequently had no memory of what happened that day. Garland then partnered with Mendoza to recreate the events on film, to provide the details to Elliott as a kind of gift.
You might wonder who in their right mind would want to remember what has to be one of the worst days of anyone’s life if you’ve had the good fortune to be spared those bloody recollections, but then I’ve never been in combat so no judgement from me on the inspiration. What I can judge is whether Mendoza’s and Garland’s project brings much to the audience besides Elliott — it’s a visceral, intense recreation in real time of these warriors’ experience, but it’s also empty.
You could suggest these men’s terrible day was the American invasion in microcosm: They went in, they shot the place up, lots of Iraqis lost their lives and many were traumatized, and then they left. That would be a stretch — the movie doesn’t bother to offer context to the soldiers’ mission or provide any background to the characters. It fetishizes their weaponry and equipment more than a James Cameron movie, which isn’t necessarily a compliment. The antagonists’ faces are barely seen, their perspective fighting off unwelcome visitors to their nation utterly absent, providing a queasy cinematic thread back to other technically accomplished but politically problematic war pictures like Blackhawk Down.
What works here is a feeling of suspense and panic as the soldiers are entirely vulnerable — this despite being the best trained and equipped fighting force in the world, who can call air cover and tanks at any time. Credit to the cast assembled — D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, and Michael Gandolfini — who deliver all the plausible fear and confusion. The effort toward accuracy does impress, and the sound design is entirely effective.
But what do you take away from Warfare beyond the singular cinematic experience? On Civil War, I could see the argument for a lack of recognizable political perspective, but this time it’s harder to understand the effort to recreate these memories and then let the audience provide the background. A docudrama experience doesn’t feel particularly valuable beyond the “war is hell” realism that we’ve seen plenty of times before. I’d rather hear the veterans themselves describe what happened that day in a documentary, and talk about whether they felt their personal sacrifice did any good for the United States or the people if Iraq. There’s a way to do this that’s more thoughtful.
Every Hollywood Vietnam movie from Coming Home to Platoon to Casualties of War was about how that war changed the American experience — one way or the other they were all aimed at coming to terms with the lingering trauma. Maybe America has gotten better at ignoring its foreign wars, but I don’t think you get to make an effective movie about Americans in Iraq without a point of view about why the soldiers were there.
